Our Dynasty has a 25 cu. ft. double door Amana. 8-6 volt batteries and a 2000 W inverter. The MH is a power hog without consdiering the fridge. Most large Decent MH's are no different. If you boondock and want to watch satellite TV and use the home theater while running water pump and lights you will need to run the Genny. John and Angela have it about right. 45 min. in the morning and 45 minutes at night will run everything and keep the batteries charged enough to run the fridge. We almost didn't by this unit as I thought the fridge would be a drawback. Au contraire it is wonderful. When my unit is resting in my shop and we want to go somewhere 2 hours will bring the fridge down to the right temp. -6 in the freezer and 38 in the fridge! Cold beer and rock hard ice cream. Probably twice the space of a Norcold 1200 and no FIRES. There is a reason why most mid and high end new units have residential fridges.

Well Gang,
To my surprise, there's way more folks boon docking with Res. fridges than I thought. I know and realize that the newer the fridge, the more efficient it is. That's comparable to all home appliances. But, it appears that while some are getting away with running them on minimal battery power and setup, a large majority have a minimum of four and some have eight (6)V batteries and, to some extent, a larger amount of solar power to augment their system(s).
It seems that many of you have adapted to what ever it takes to make the alternative of a res fridge work, in whatever camping status you're camping in, at whatever frequency you camp. That's cool, er ah, cold that is. This is definitely a learning situation for me. Thanks again for all your answers.
Scott

I love my residential fridge and camping at the primitive sites/campgrounds is my favorite. Yes, you will need to run your gennie *some* and yes having a healthy battery bank and having solar helps. But.... we do it semi-frequently.

Lots of good info here. I'm looking at getting a DP and had the same ?? about the fridge but am now not worried as we typically run the generator for a couple hours in the am and a bit in the eve with our TT. I will keep my Honda EU3000 and run it instead of MH generator when needed. I also bought the cart before the horse in that i bought my stepsons GMC Canyon to tow behind the MH when i find the one i want.

With the advance in technology, (ie. refrigeratores, batteries, solar panels and electronic managment systems) it is possible to live totally off grid without breaking the bank and with minimal maintenance.
The price of solar has dropped dramatically and with AGM batteries that will accept recharge at higher rates,will not freeze and are virtually maintenance free are beginning to change the RV industry.

We are not much for primitive camping. We belong to gated RV preserves with full hook ups 99% of the time and if I ever decided to install a residentual fridge it would work just fine on my coach. But I have had my 1200 LRIM fridge now for nine years and it has worked perfect. I never worry about fires, the odds are so remote that it does not make sense to me jumping to conclusions that it will go up in flames.

I also think that if you do a lot of primitive camping a residentual refrigerator is not practical at all. Batteries take up a lot of room and weight, plus servicing eight or ten batteries is just too much. Most of these luxury coaches that are coming out with residential type refrigerators are not designed for premitive camping anyways. They are mostly for people that stay in luxury type RV parks with full hook ups. Fact I have never seen a luxury coach and I am talking about a 700K coach camping out in the wilderness.

But if it ever goes up in flames because of the Norcold 1200, we will just turn it over to our insurance and get a new coach. We have smoke detectors that will give us plenty of warning to get out of a coach if smoke is detected. Too many people freaking out over a hand full of fires, when probably this company has got in circulation millions of 1200 LRIM refrigerators which have worked perfect. It does not matter what product is mass produced, you will have a percentage of failure.

Having lots of batteries can also be hazardess with all the hydrogen gasses that they put out. You better not have any flame close to where all those batteries are. I have seen many batteries blow up just because of a small spark.
Not trying to scare anybody, but this is just the truth that having a bunch of batteries does not make it all safe. There is always danger on anything that deals with gasses.

harold1946 wrote:With the advance in technology, (ie. refrigeratores, batteries, solar panels and electronic managment systems) it is possible to live totally off grid without breaking the bank and with minimal maintenance.
The price of solar has dropped dramatically and with AGM batteries that will accept recharge at higher rates,will not freeze and are virtually maintenance free are beginning to change the RV industry.

you take the cost of a PROPER size solar system and a proper amount of AGM batterys along with a large inveter system added etc. you can burn a lot of gen set fuel for many years and never break even

moisheh wrote:Our Dynasty has a 25 cu. ft. double door Amana. 8-6 volt batteries and a 2000 W inverter. The MH is a power hog without consdiering the fridge. Most large Decent MH's are no different. If you boondock and want to watch satellite TV and use the home theater while running water pump and lights you will need to run the Genny. John and Angela have it about right. 45 min. in the morning and 45 minutes at night will run everything and keep the batteries charged enough to run the fridge. We almost didn't by this unit as I thought the fridge would be a drawback. Au contraire it is wonderful. When my unit is resting in my shop and we want to go somewhere 2 hours will bring the fridge down to the right temp. -6 in the freezer and 38 in the fridge! Cold beer and rock hard ice cream. Probably twice the space of a Norcold 1200 and no FIRES. There is a reason why most mid and high end new units have residential fridges.